Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

Middle English, past participle of binden, to bind, from Old English bindan; see bind.

Examples

Mr Virgo made it clear to the editor that it was his bounden duty to pass any information he might receive notifying the whereabouts of Biggs to police and this the editor said he would be happy to do...

It is the bounden duty of Australia A teams above all else to cut the Poms down to size before the big stuff starts, and just for a while mid-innings today, when England got the wobbles and lost a trio of wickets for 13 runs while still a hundred or so behind the hosts, it looked as if they might manage it once more.

May it please your good Lordship, That albeit we attend here on my Lady Elizabeth's Grace, our Mistress ... we do not forget our most bounden Duty, nor yet our Readiness in Words and Deeds to serve her Highness [Queen Mary] by all the Ways and Means that may stand in Us, both from her Grace, our Mistress, and of our own Parts also .. .166

On the transatlantic crossing homeward, he conversed with an American Catholic priest who said, “My country is just mad on this subject of drink and I have felt it my bounden duty as a priest to teach my flock how to make good honest liquor.”

In 1963, less than 3 months after Martin Luther King Jr., delivered his famous “I Have a Dream Speech,” he wrote in a column, “[It is] clearly the bounden duty of all intelligent Americans to proclaim and practice bigotry.”